There is no doubt that, since 1977 and the launch of Apple II - the first computer it produced for the mass market - many things which used to be done on paper, or on the telephone, have been done easier and faster on a screen.
I have all of the Apple products. Everything I've ever written, I've written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh - 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music.
People always talk about the implication and applications of a process, but for me, the goal is purely about knowledge. Knowledge can become practical today, in 20 years, or in 500 years. Ask Newton. He didn't know there would be space research based on his accident with the apple.
Apple does a very good job of not letting its competitors know what it is working on, and Apple does a very good job of not confusing customers by causing them to anticipate what the next new thing is going to be and then causing those customers not to buy the products that are on the shelves now.
Sony's Walkman far predated the iPod. Nokia ruled smartphones before Apple.
No matter your interpretation of Apple's success with its Watch, it has become a leader - and it wasn't first to market.
What to do with a leading business that's challenged by a new technology wave without hurting an existing profit stream? The single greatest example of recent memory is Apple's willingness to decimate iPod sales by incorporating all the category-defining product's features into a new gizmo, the iPhone.
The iPod was once so important to Apple that the estimable journalist Steven Levy wrote an entire book about it. And then, poof! The iPod was nearly gone.
Apple is so secretive internally, they keep secrets from each other.
Apple is a military-like command-and-control organization where people lower down in the organization manage up. They are constantly preparing their boss who may be preparing their boss and their boss for a presentation to the CEO or to the executive team.
